Steve Adler Recalls His Firing From Guns N’ Roses

Steven Adler's exit from Guns N' Roses in the '90s was a highly publicized departure. The drummer was deep in the throes of addiction and was formally fired from the group after he could not perform a song. Recently, Adler appeared in the podcast Mom, It's Not the Devil's Music! alongside Sumerian Records owner Ash Avildsen to speak about what he went through after his firing.

"One day I just went, 'This isn't cool. I don't wanna do this anymore,'" Adler says (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). "And I didn't realize that if you're doing heroin and then you stop doing it, you get violently sick — violently sick. Like, the inside of your bones ache — the inside of your every bone, it aches so bad and you just wanna die. And I called my manager and I said, 'Dude, I'm so fucking sick. I don't understand what's going on.' So he came and picked me up, he took me to this doctor, and the doctor gave me an opiate blocker. Well, you're not supposed to take an opiate blocker while you have opiates in your system or you get even more violently sick."

Adler also recounts the events of that fateful "Civil War" recording session that would lead to his firing, "Three days go by, and I'm calling a doctor and I'm going, 'What the fuck did you do to me?' And, like, four days go by, and Slash called and said, 'Well, we're going in the studio to record 'Civil War.'' And I said, 'Dude, I'm so sick. Please, can we just wait one more week? I'm so sick.' And he said, 'We can't waste the money. We've gotta do this song.' So I go in at A&M Records to record, and I'm so weak and sick," recalled Adler. "I did my best, but I had to play, like, 25 times. So they were getting frustrated. And I kept telling them, 'I'm sick.' And they kept saying, 'No, you're not. You're just fucked up.' And I said, 'I'm not fucked up. I'm sick.' And I got kicked out."

Adler recently appeared on several dates of the Guns N' Roses "Not In This Lifetime"tour. He's currently planning to release a biography titled Steven Adler: The Shit My Friends Remember I Did. See video of his interview below.